PREAMBLE: Challenging chase day indeed. When I think how insanely lucky I got today, I hardly feel that I deserved such success. It's funny how this chase doesn't feel "earned" (and I don't even know what I mean about this other than I abandoned my target, got way behind the storms from the get go, traversed I-70 back and forth between Colby and Wakeeney at least 4 times in indecision, etc.)...And yet...I am happy to report this all came together insanely.
SHORT: One spectacular elephant trunk tornado, one spectacular sunset, too numerous to count lightning shots along the dryline
LONG: Started the day in Sterling, CO. As I targeted Goodland to Colby, KS, I left in 57/57 degree mist. The winds at the sfc were gusting to 40mph out of the SSE. I was knocked completely out-of-whack when convection fired along the I-25 corridor prompting a watch, and what ended up being the most unbelievable tornado I've ever seen in the I-25 corridor. To my knowledge, this is the first wedge tornado ever filmed that far west along the front range (areas around Limon and Last Chance are usually where Tds get high enough to give a more favorable scenario). And to add to the weirdness, the wedge moved WNW...As the tornado watch went up in NE CO, I got unsettled and undecided. Ultimately, I trusted the dryline to hold the magic I wanted and abandoned CO only to watch TOR after TOR going up in Weld Cty, CO. I struggled hard with the decision, but made my way to I-70.
Shortly after getting to the CO/KS border, the entire dryline lit up as did the warm front. I was horrified. Suddenly I was starving in plenty and needed to figure out where the hell to go. This led to back-and-forth I-70 jaunt from Colby to Wakeeney several times. Ultimately, I finally noted that things on radar were becoming more clear. A cell firing in Gove had organized rapidly. I felt that I could intercept the RFD as the storm moved north over I-70. But the speeds were such that it was a race between me punching the RFD and the storm moving north off the highway.
As I broke out of the precip I was entreated to a conical funnel that moved rapidly northward, crossing from right to left across my windshield. This ended up putting down the tornado I have up on my website presently. Nice contrast, white elephant trunk zipped northward at >50mph and rapidly was beyond my hopes of tracking. See my website (
http://stormdoctor.com/) for the pic.
Ultimately, I jogged back west to set up for the next in the train of storms. This time I was entreated to a spectacular sunset with the sun poking out behind rain curtains with backlit mammatus in gold and orange. Dropped my jaw.
Then, giving it one last go as a mesocyclone flew overhead in Quinter, KS, I attempted to chase recurringly TVS marked cells moving up east of Gove. That was a big F (for fail). And realized daylight was over and now I shot back on I-70 once again to capture the updrafts along the dryline. Spectacular dryline nighttime show with CCs and crawlers in a smorgasbord of plenty. It will take me most of the night to even begin to tease out which shots settle above the fray (they're all incredible). Ended the day in Quinter, KS, along I-70.
POSTAMBLE: G'night...pix in am. Wild day. Won't even begin to speculate about tomorrow's setup. What a wallop of storms today. Cringing a little at the damage count based on prelim reports.